Chester County library system releases top 10 books of 2012

The Chester County Library system released the top 10 circulated books of 2012, and what did people read? -- Young adult or adult fiction.

“It seemed pretty normal actually,” said Joseph Sherwood, executive director of the Chester County Library system. Nonfiction is more often checked out when people are looking for specific things, “so you won’t get the huge numbers of circulation.”

Each of the top 10 books circulated more than 1,000 times, and that didn’t include renewals or electronic book circulations.

While Sherwood wasn’t surprised by the top 10 list and its genre, he was surprised that most of the children’s book titles circulated under 1,000 times.

“The top ones in the children’s categories were around 900,” he said. “But then again parents tend to take out things that were special in their childhood a lot … So you see older titles, so it spreads it out a little more. Whereas with the adult fiction, those were all recent titles within the last couple of years or the media tie in with ‘The Hunger Games’.”

Sherwood said that titles get popular because people have an interest in the topic, an interest in the author or through word of mouth.

“People want to read what everybody else reads. It’s a natural part of the business,” he said.

So when a book gets popular, people start requesting it and the library buys more so that circulation can also increase.

According to Sherwood, this was the first time the Chester County Library System released a top 10 list, but he wants to do it again.

“I think it’s always interesting to see what people are reading. It helps us as we buy the new stuff coming in,” he said. “While the list of top 10 ended up being all fiction, we’ll look down the list and see what were the hot nonfiction titles.”

Sherwood said he likes to note what other types of books were circulated – such as cookbooks, health books, craft books, medical books or another genre.

“We’ll look at buying in areas where we have a lot of interest in the community,” said Sherwood. “So that’s the most interesting part of it for me is not necessarily the top 10, but how the whole collection is moving.”